Up and running slowly but surely this fine 2017 season. I kicked things off, oiled things up and dusted of the cobwebs (from the elbows, that is) with a little test run of an old favorite.

In case you wanted know, here are a few things I learned printing that day:

Printing with art stretched on wooden frames is really frustrating. After washing the ink out of the frame a few times, the wood begins to bow and warp making it quite difficult to get a clean, even pull of the squeegee. And this is a treated frame, too. Maybe it’s just old. Aluminum frames are much better in this regard – and much lighter, too.

Printing with copper (a mixture of gold and red and perhaps something else) thickens and gunks up your screen rather quickly. A bit of humidity certainly doesn’t help the situation. But I was surprised at how quickly said situation deteriorated.

This season is shaping up to be a little more unusual – pleasantly and surprisingly so – than seasons past. I’m rolling with it and I think the body of work will reflect this embrace of the fluidity.

Back at the office, new business cards we had printed up arrived with cover-weight protective inserts placed between each card. That’s how precious these business cards were. Duplexed. Letter pressed. With protection. Between. Each. And. Every. Card. Even these protective inserts were nice. Thick. Smooth. Bright white. Perfect for something. And there they sat. A stack of them gleaming, beaming, waiting for action. To my mind they deserved a future beyond mere fodder for sketches, grocery lists or the recycle bin.

I taped up a grid of them into a large sheet and screen printed as I would’ve any other new thing. So yeah, that was cool. That was fun. Tricky at times. But the best part was dismantling the sheet back into a set of small cards.

The original design was obliterated into an array of smaller originals I never intended nor would’ve conceived. Better yet, the cards could be reconfigured into a number of additional unique compositions.

I love that. Locking into one concept and then deconstructing the whole thing to reveal a totally new idea. It lets you see things in a new way. Which leads to new ideas. So further down the rabbit hole you go.